MARITIME CHOKEPOINT
South China Sea · Held by 🇨🇳 China · Measured across 4,320 simulated wars
Hormuz is the strait every oil desk watches; the South China Sea is the one that actually gets sealed. It reaches full control — transit forbidden — more often than any other gate in this model, and the reason is the least dramatic one available: China survives. A closure needs resolve and it needs means, and the means are the only term that can fall. China is struck in more simulated wars than any other chokepoint holder, which supplies the resolve; and it is large enough that being struck does not take the coastal missiles and the fleet away with it. Every other holder here is eventually ground back down to harassment. This one is not, and Japan, South Korea and the Philippines are the states that find out.
The engine sets a level per strait per round, and it is the lower of two terms: how badly the holder wants the strait shut, and whether it still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to keep it shut. Willingness only ratchets up — a state that has been hit has less reason to reopen, not more. Capability is the only term that can fall, which is why a closure here is not permanent.
A level is the lower of two terms, so every strait is limited by one of them. Resolve arrives when the holder is shot at — that is what buys the second rung. Whether the level actually follows depends on whether the holder still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to enforce it.
Capability-bound. The resolve arrives: the holder is struck in most of the wars that shut this strait. But the force that would enforce a blockade has been ground down by the time it would matter, so the level falls back. This is a strait that closes and then reopens.
Share of all simulated wars in which this state is cut off by a partial blockade or worse.
Opening moves that most often end with this strait shut. Click one to run it.